The oligopoly’s shift to open access: How the big five academic publishers profit from article processing charges Abstract. We aim to estimate the total amount of article processing charges (APCs) paid to publish open access (OA) in journals controlled by the five large commercial publishers (Elsevier, Sage, Spri...

on the same topic, but looking at the data longitudinally there is also this amazing paper: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

Based on much evidence that many publishers use the pressure to publish open access (OA) as a means to increase the article processing charges (APCs) (see https://lnkd.in/gKFufubk for example) I… | Ni... Based on much evidence that many publishers use the pressure to publish open access (OA) as a means to increase the article processing charges (APCs) (see https://lnkd.in/gKFufubk for example) I wante...

thanks for the suggestion! I cannot say for sure because in our data we cannot really split the non-OA category between Hybrid and Subscribe to compare them as we don't have enough journals classified as subscribe, but I wrote the same post on linkedin and many people confirmed your intuition!

And don't hesitate to also play with the data from our database wheretopublish.github.io APCs are mostly collected from the openAPC database (www.openapc.net) and all our data can be freely downloaded from our website as a .csv file :) #whereToPublish #APC #scientificPublicationSystem

I don't have an easy explanation for that, but one possibility is that journals with editors willing to go fully for OA may also be the ones where editors are more motivated to maintain APCs low. Happy to hear more thoughts on that

To my own surprise, I must confess that what I observed was the opposite: OA journals have, on average, cheaper APCs than non-OA journals (i.e. hybrid + subscription journals).

Adoption of open access is rising – but so too are its costs - LSE Impact Options available to authors to make their work open access are on the rise. Adoption of open access itself is also rising, and usage of open-access materials is similarly increasing. However, alongsi...

Based on much evidence that many publishers use the pressure to publish open access (OA) as a means to increase the article processing charges (APCs) I wanted to verify the assumption that for-profit OA journals are more expensive than for-profit non-OA journals in our where to publish database

😢 the "Choose Europe" is a big joke in front of such cuts #chooseEurope

You can also see very quickly the outliers on our where-to-publish life-sciences database where APCs are mostly based on the openAPC database www.openapc.net for-profit journals and especially Elsevier and Springer Nature journals are clearly at the top

I always had the vague feeling that Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are mainly APC business models.

A paper estimated the total APC for gold/hybrid Open Access per journal 2015–2018: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Surprise, surprise - there are 2 outliers at the top😐

Major Chinese funder to stop paying fees for 30 pricey open-access journals Move comes amid effort to grow the country’s own journals

"High-profile, high-fee journals affected include Nature Communications, Cell Reports, and Science Advances." Things are accelerating a bit as it seems when one of the only countries who raised its science budget decides to changes the journals it accepts to fund... #AcademicSky

🚨Today 4pm CET🚨

PCI Webinar: The Drain of Scientific Publishing: why publishing is becoming a burden for science and how to fix it

An overview talk based on three papers on #ScientificPublishing, where it stands & how to fix it. Plus dad jokes and bad acronyms.

peercommunityin.org/pci-webinar-...

sad for US but " Abrahams hopes to host the ceremony in a different European city every other year." 😍

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

Also note that stats were done with non-parametric tests, and the only groups that are not different are the [for-profit associated with a scientific society] vs [university press], otherwise all the 2-by-2 posthoc tests are significant (p<=0.005; the 4 groups being: FP/FP with a Society/UP/NP)

and indeed the opposite holds true in the for-profit group:
mean = 2635€
median = 2543€
while in the non-profit + UP as you observed:
mean = 1996€
median = 2228€

thanks for the fbk, yeah sounds likely, you can already see it on the where to publish website if you filter the data by publisher type. There are more diamond OA (0€ APC) in the non-profit group while the extreme high outliers are more concentrated in the for-profit group

@diegoharta.bsky.social @phylogenetrips.bsky.social

To conclude: check our Where To Publish database and don't hesitate to also play with the data which can easily be downloaded from the website!
#OpenAccess #ScientificSky #ScientificPublicationSystem #Science #articleProcessingCharges #AcademicSky #OpenScience
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Side note: the APC values are mostly indicative and are mostly based on the openAPC database (www.openapc.net)
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Notably, non-profit journals are the definitive winners and are even cheaper than university press journals with an average 1792 +/- 90€ of APCs!
This is clearly a call for change but sadly, for-profit journals clearly dominate the market with 71% of the journals in the database being for-profit..

Also unsurprisingly, the difference is statistically significant (p<0.001) and the average price is even higher when looking at for-profit journals that are NOT associated with one way or another to a scientific society:
2829 +/- 53€
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Based on our WhereToPublish database, we were curious to see if the APCs depend on the publisher type and with relatively no surprise at all, the journals that are for-profit are way above:
For-profit journals = 2635 +/- 37€ (mean +/- sem)
Non-profit & University Press journals = 1996 +/- 63€
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Academic publishers defeat lawsuit over ‘peer review’ pay, other restrictions A group of major academic publishers convinced a judge in New York to dismiss a lawsuit accusing them of thwarting competition by barring scholars from submitting papers to multiple journals simultane...

Unsurprising, but still sad that it didn't work out www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

If you work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning, consider applying for this postdoc position (January 2027 start date):
academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15868
An opportunity to work with a great group of people across Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.

Little error on the contact email: this is the correct adress wheretopublish-contact at protonmail.com

and for those in ecology & evolution, there is also the DAFNEE database which hilights specifically ethical journals in that field dafnee.isem-evolution.fr and that we also exploited to build where to publish. Thanks @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social for the exchanges!

Because they are a for-profit journal that wants to make money and they know that topic is hot within and beyond scientists... just a wild guess 😁

For more literature on the subject, you can also look at all the great work done by @hansonmark.bsky.social, @paolocrosetto.bsky.social and colleagues bsky.app/profile/hans...

Change is possible and alternatives exist. Let’s make it happen!
If you would like to contribute, don’t hesitate to write to us at wheretopublish@protonmail.com or directly via contributing on the database or website.
#ScientificPublicationSystem
#OpenAccess
#OpenScience
#AcademicSky
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